Intense Walt Disney

   Walt Disney was reported to be always in the grip of passion. Hegel, the German Philosopher, as much as a rationalist as one could ever be, asserted that great things are always done with passion.  I guess it was through and with passion that Hegel gave rationality a divine status. And of course, it was also through and with passion that Walt Disney gave fantasy the truth of spirit.









 (Sketch of Walt Disney by Eleonora Duvivier)

Disney Birthday

    One of the nice things about being a Disney fan, with friends like one on FB, is that one gets birthday cards and wishes from all the Disney character's family. And when that was such a pungent reality at the beginning of one's childhood, that works like a soothing and healing root throughout one's life, it makes one's birthday, literally and metaphorically "magic". It reverts you to that genuine  part of your being that happens also to be your foundation, as if cradling and reasserting it. I will thus post this lovely mandala that one of these friends made for me!

(image by Mark Vitek)

Disney Inspiration

     As always, Walt was the simplest and the most complex, when saying: "When you believe in something, believe it all the way, implicity and unquestionably"

     One cannot "make" oneself believe in this way,

     One cannot simply pick something in which to believe,

     One cannot force oneself to believe in anything,

     One cannot have such fervor just on advice,

For, to believe at all takes intuition,

To believe so strongly requires single mindedness,

To believe unquestionably involves purity,

To believe implicitly (non verbally ) involves integrity, and, finally,

To have all these qualities results from imperative inspiration!

-Disneyssence- (drawing by Eleonora Duvivier)

Disney America

 Walt Disney always acted on ideals,

before any self- profit;

 Walt Disney always look for challenges, 

rather than repeat what was successful;

Walt Disney always in search of outdoing himself, 

and convince others of it;

Walt Disney always asserted that if they didn't grow 

artistically, 

they would begin to die...

Walt Disney imparted a sense of cause, rather than just

business....

That someone so self-sacrificing, 

with such a love of work,

with no shadow of self-sparing, 

and having such an inflexible

faith,  should so gloriously succeed in this country,

 is a proof 

not just of his worth, but of America's.   (Disneyssence)

Disney Encounter

     Disneyland is totally adictive. I thought I was never going back to a Disney park, because of the lines that keep getting bigger, but even if all one cares to do is to hang out on Main St, one is still inside that bubble of fiction that allows one to be in touch with oneself and with one's childhood.... I guess it is because the greatest welcoming one can have from the world is, paradoxically, to be allowed to be with oneself; with one's inner child.

Disney Wisdom

     Walt Disney understood that life was fight and fun, laugh and determination, freedom and leadership, and that reaching fantasy is not an escape, but a victory, an overcoming of reality.
"Disneyssence"

Disney Happy Ending

   Fernando Pessoa had the poetic and unabashed optimism to assert: “Everything ends well. If things are not well, it’s because it is not the end yet. “  Along these lines death is  an ending well, and the other world a possible  paradise, which it should be. Not as vague and equation like as Pessoa, Disney had enough innocence to specify this ending- well as the communion of love, faith and fantasy. Since love, faith and fantasy are equally transcendent, a Disney happy ending, like that of Pessoa’s, is beyond chronology: before having or not to happen, it is true in its very conception, self sufficiently true.

Disney Overcoming of Reality

With animation, Walt Disney turned movement, which is the most primary and immediate reality, (lets say, it's the "seed" of all reality) into fantasy; Into the very overcoming and liberation of reality itself. While movement, in reality, is pragmatic, (always in function of a determinate goal), in animation it is valid in itself; while in reality it is always means to an end, in animation, like in dance, it is meaning, or story's expression.
Disneyssence

Disney Advice

"The more you are like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique." - Walt Disney 
It's kind of cute the way he defines authenticity, as "being like oneself", rather than the more usual "being oneself". It makes it as something to be attainable and something that admits of degrees "the more you... the less you...", but as something to be attained. He knew it, because he did it!
Disneyssence
Drawing by Eleonora Duvivier

Disney Coherence

Freedom from the laws of reality in the language of animation fulfills not just the inexorability of fiction lines, but the transcending of personality. Story events and personality, in Disney animation, respond to and reflect each other, so that the surrounding world is nothing more than the scenery, the meant-to-be stage for this exchange to happen.
   The unfolding of Disney animation therefore has the power of sheer coherence in turning action into magic tricks, plot into designation, personality into soul.
Disneyssence